Scientific Highlights

17 January 2018. Astronomers, under the lead of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen and with participation of the Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP) using ESO’s MUSE instrument on the Very Large Telescope in Chile have discovered a star in the cluster NGC 3201 that is behaving very strangely. It appears to be orbiting an invisible black hole with about four times the mass of the Sun — the first such inactive stellar-mass black hole found in a globular cluster and the first found by directly detecting its gravitational pull. This important discovery impacts on our understanding of the formation of these star clusters, black holes, and the origins of gravitational wave events.

9 January 2018. The Potsdam Echelle Polarimetric and Spectroscopic Instrument (PEPSI) at the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) in Arizona released its first batch of high-spectral resolution data to the scientific community. In a series of three papers in the European journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, the PEPSI team presents a new spectral atlas of the Sun, a total of 48 atlases of bright benchmark stars, and a detailed analysis of the chemical abundances of the 10-billion year old planet-system host Kepler-444.

29 November 2017. Astronomers using the MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile focused on the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, measuring distances and properties of 1600 very faint galaxies including 72 galaxies that have never been detected before. This resulted in the deepest spectroscopic observations ever made and 10 science papers that are being published in a special issue of Astronomy & Astrophysics.

20 November 2017. Scientists from the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) have joined an international research team to create one of the largest sets of galaxies in a computer generated universe. The data are published via AIP's CosmoSim database.

17 November 2017. The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation will award a $16 million grant for the next generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-V). The grant will kickstart a groundbreaking all-sky spectroscopic survey for a next wave of discovery, anticipated to start in 2020.

12 October 2017. Thanks to a cleverly designed "two-in-one" instrument attached to the world's most powerful telescope, astronomers can extract more clues about the properties of distant stars or exoplanets than previously possible.

10 October 2017. To produce cosmological simulations and study our local neighbourhood in the Universe: The cosmologist Dr. Jenny Sorce received a fellowship of the L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science programme. Sorce is a postdoctoral researcher at the astronomical observatory in Strasbourg, France, and a guest researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP). She was awarded a fellowship in the French national programme, which is granted annually, and will receive 20,000 euros.

19 September 2017. At the annual meeting of the German Astronomical Society 2017, the Council of German Observatories presented the Denkschrift 2017 “Perspectives of astrophysics in Germany 2017-2030: From the beginnings of the cosmos to clues for life on extrasolar planets“. In this publication, the Council of German Observatories (in German: Rat Deutscher Sternwarten, or RDS for short) gives an overview of the status of the field of astronomy and astrophysics, presents the main scientific questions and lays out the structures needed to further promote the field. The RDS recommends for example the participation of Germany in the construction and further development of major observatories such as the Extremely Large Telescope and other observatories by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile, the Square Kilometre Array in South Africa and Australia, and the European Solar Telescope on Tenerife. The RDS supports a strong German investment in space research, especially within the national space program.

12 September 2017. A solar eclipse gives researchers the opportunity to observe parts of the sun that are normally invisible. With the Solar Disk Integrated Telescope (SDI) on Mount Graham in Arizona, USA, scientists of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) have remotely observed the solar eclipse on 21 August 2017. During the course of the eclipse, they obtained about one hundred spectra in two wavelength regions. The SDI feeds light into the PEPSI high-resolution spectrograph in the pier of the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT).

02 August 2017. Spectacular improvement of astronomical observations with MUSE using adaptive optics. Astronomers have been observing distant galaxies and nebulae with unprecedented quality using the MUSE instrument at the European Southern Observatory (ESO). This was made possible by commissioning of a new adaptive optics facility at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in the Chilean Atacama desert.

13 July 2017. To observe the Sun at close range and measure its activity: with launch in February 2019, as part of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Solar Orbiter spacecraft, STIX will study solar X-ray radiation in unprecedented detail. An international team with researchers from the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) has developed STIX and now completed it. The AIP is the only German institute involved in this instrument.

7 July 2017. What do we know about our home galaxy, the Milky Way? How was the Galaxy assembled and how did it evolve from the most pristine eras to its present state? About 200 astronomers meet from Monday, 10 July 2017, till Friday, 14 July 2014, on Telegrafenberg in Potsdam at the IAU symposium “Rediscovering our Galaxy” to debate the latest research results and surveys in the field of galactic archaeology. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) supports the event, which the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) is organising and hosting, with further support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation).

15 May 2017. Where do sunspots form? Just below the Sun’s surface or deep down inside? The SPOTSIM project, that studies the origin of sunspots using magnetohydrodynamic simulations has now been awarded competed time on the MareNostrum supercomputer in Spain.

5 May 2017. The biggest infrared image ever taken of the Small Magellanic Cloud: With the telescope VISTA, an international team of astronomers led by AIP researcher Prof. Dr. Maria-Rosa Cioni has been able to see the myriad of stars in this neighbouring galaxy much more clearly than ever before.

6 April 2017. The Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) is launching a new Virtual Reality (VR) website. Offering 360 degree videos and panoramas, the new web portal vr.aip.de invites visitors to experience the cosmos and to take virtual tours through astronomical observatories. The website can be navigated either in VR mode, using a VR-headset, or via touch and click on any display. All media is based on scientific results, simulations from supercomputers, or images from telescopes and observatories.

3 April 2017. How do galaxies and galaxy clusters, which are among the largest structures in the universe, form? Do cosmic rays have an impact on galaxy and cluster formation? Prof. Dr. Christoph Pfrommer is seeking answers to these questions. Starting in April, Pfrommer is leading the research group Cosmology and Large-scale Structure at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) and doing research as a jointly appointed professor at the University of Potsdam. The astrophysicist has moved to Potsdam from the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS).

19 September 2016. The new data release of the RAdial Velocity Experiment (RAVE) is the fifth spectroscopic release of a survey of stars in the southern celestial hemisphere. It contains radial velocities for 520 781 spectra of 457 588 unique stars that were observed over ten years. With these measurements RAVE complements the first data release of the Gaia survey published by the European Space Agency ESA last week by providing radial velocities and stellar parameters, like temperatures, gravities and metallicities of stars in our Milky Way.

15 September 2016. The mystery of a rare change in the behaviour of a supermassive black hole at the centre of a distant galaxy has been solved by an international team of astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope along with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. It seems that the black hole has fallen on hard times and is no longer being fed enough fuel to make its surroundings shine.

14. September 2016. The European Space Agency's (ESA) mission Gaia published its first set of results on 14th of September 2016. The first data release contains parallaxes and proper motions of about two million stars. These measurements have been eagerly awaited by astronomers because they will enable them to study the Milky Way in unprecedented detail.

23 August 2016. ESO has signed an agreement with a consortium led by the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) to build 4MOST, a unique, next-generation spectroscopic instrument, which will be mounted on the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in northern Chile. 4MOST, the 4-metre Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope, is expected to collect approximately 75 million spectra over its planned fifteen-year lifetime.